


The Weight and Weightlessness of You and Me

by alltheglitters



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-27
Updated: 2013-03-27
Packaged: 2017-12-06 16:50:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/737926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alltheglitters/pseuds/alltheglitters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It begins with a wedding, involves two very broken people and ends up with second chances.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Weight and Weightlessness of You and Me

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: in its use of intellectual property and characters belonging to J. K. Rowling (a.k.a. my childhood/young adulthood/life) and Bloomsbury Publishing, this work of fiction is intended to be transformative commentary on the original. No profit is being made from this work.

XI.  
  
He grasps for a warm body next to his. That feeling of his fingers running through her dark mane is nearly tangible –  
  
Her inability to share a duvet, he once found hilarious. He remembers it every morning when the alarm rings and he realises that she’s no longer hogging his pillow.  
  
Though, it doesn’t make him laugh anymore.  
  
Anything that went to hell isn’t supposed to.  
  
  
  
  
  
X.  
  
“Congratulations.”  
  
Her voice is low, in contrast to the noisiness of the party. Controlled. She doesn’t let on more than she has to. Even though he had expected it, when he turns around and sees her, it nevertheless strikes him hard and cold how little has changed.  
  
Her nose is sharper, her green eyes more devious, though those lips of hers are the same: the cupid’s bow prominent and she’s still smiling at him mischievously. Her posture is less forced, her expression more natural, confident. While she will never be traditionally beautiful, there’s something about her face that is… alarming, alluring and entirely _Pansy_.  
  
Not that he has the right to ogle anymore.  
  
He’s still staring – his eyes must be as wide as a hippogriff’s by now! It doesn’t even hit him until this precise moment that he’s been looking at this woman for a good ten seconds and has yet to speak. You’d think that all of his Auror training would’ve taught him how to not be an idiot. “Pan – Parkinson.”  
  
He hates her, doesn’t get her, yet he thinks _where the hell is she_ every time he returns to his empty flat.  
  
“Thank you,” he adds, taking a step forward, his arms wide open to give her a thank-you hug.  
  
Suddenly, he is thrilled upon realising that this ceremony is, as Hermione promised, private. Without the hounding journalists, all of whom are interested in The Boy Who Lived’s love life. Part of why he can’t move forward might be because there isn’t a day when they _don’t_ treat him like a war hero or a lost boy. The latter, mostly. He is the new Head Auror, for Merlin’s sake! Surely, that counts for something.  
  
(He remains still because of _her_ too, but that’s him not moving on from something else.)  
  
She holds her hand out to shake his. The gesture is formal, unfamiliar, taking him by surprise. As a result, her fingernails, painted a cerulean blue, jab him in the chest, and he winces.  
  
“Sorry. Shit.”  
  
They always have a way of colliding into each other, don’t they?  
  
  
  
  
  
IX.  
  
He doesn’t remember the specific details. The war-ridden order of things altered his psyche, allowed him to flush certain tragedies from his mind. He no longer recalls her tears falling onto the centuries-old cobbled street outside the cathedral; nor his sweaty hand gripping her wrist when she pronounced that she didn’t want to marry him, her white gown stained with dirt. Instead, every time he thinks about it, it is merely a consuming, bottomless sadness growing in his stomach, the ache threatening to run through his veins and make his very bones crack. Nothing more. Nothing at all.  
  
  
  
  
  
VIII.  
  
While he and Pansy sit at an otherwise unoccupied, but large table, neither of them say much. Dinner jackets and colourful gowns paired with bizarre fascinators pass them in a blur.  
  
Then, steadily, their awkward silence becomes comfortable. Her hand merely an inch from his.  
  
Seconds later, Harry catches Hermione looking at him from the dance floor, her eyes curious, arms around Malfoy’s neck. They’re swaying gently to the orchestra, the lilt and melody complimented by footsteps of their loved ones. Harry often envies how content they are, though at times he feels guilty for thinking that. He is feeling no differently today: only the guilt is also due to something else – on her wedding day, his best mate is busy worrying about him.  
  
Nothing has changed since Year One.  
  
He nods, affirming the familiar half-lie he has been saying for most of his adult life. _I’m fine, Hermione._  
  
Neither of them are convinced, but as they grew up, Hermione learned that no matter how hard she tries to knock down those walls, she can’t even fathom how high they must extend. She can’t always make him budge…  
  
Though, maybe, Pansy’s head resting on his shoulder can do the job.  
  
Shifting, shifting, Harry’s foot is on a stool. Her leg tangled with his, hidden beneath the eggshell-coloured table linen.  
  
  
  
  
  
VII.  
  
With people who are important to you, your relationships with them, they’re not easy. You have obstacles to tackle and labyrinths to trudge through. You can’t love them all the time; in the same way, knowing that at the end of the day, underneath that anger, the disappointment, you won’t be anywhere without them.  
  
At least, that is how a 27-year-old Harry Potter feels regarding Ron and Hermione, and the Weasleys. Ginny, he loves like a sister, probably always has, but that love has changed over the years into a platonic, more genuine affection.  
  
Now with Pansy, it’s complicated. Or rather, much more straightforward. He’s hated her before, hated her again. But he didn’t fall in love twice. It was just once, because in between the fights, nights in and stolen glances, he has never stopped.  
  
  
  
  
  
VI.  
  
Apparating back to hers, he lands on her sofa, but immediately, she’s on her feet. While she’s studying the giant _mop_ that is his hair, he grabs her by the hand, pulls her to him. Her first response is a groan, a punch to the chest (“Ow, dammit, Parkinson!”), but when she gives in, she forgets why she put up a fight in the first place.  
  
  
  
  
  
V.  
  
In the morning, she wakes up to see him sighing. Did she snore? Is he too polite to tell her that? No… she recognises the hunched shoulders, his looking down: he doesn’t want her to see his face for his eyes were not dry.  
  
He croaks, “Why’d you leave?”  
  
She is as reluctant to talk as he is dying for an answer. Any goddamn answer. Please. She owed – _owes_ – him more than that. (She was just a coward. Terrified, so she hadn’t explained things properly.)  
  
Now, she tells him. Her voice barely above a whisper. What happened was that at twenty-two, she was in love and mad, and madly in love. Happy at the prospect of being happy, but after thirty-two hours and fifty-nine minutes of wearing the gold ring around her finger, it grew heavy.  
  
She was not prepared. When you stood in the face of death and spat at it, in his case, or in hers, when you hid in the rubble instead, you lose sight of that and you rush. You no longer want to be rooted in the past, but by doing so, time catches up.  
  
Five years later, here. Listen, listen to her, Harry! She can be ready, she is getting there… only… only “if you let me.”  
  
He is relieved, but not angry. He’s responsible too, he knows that now: a few months before the set wedding date, he suggested places like Crete and Auckland. He wanted to get as far away from the ruins as possible.  
  
To be rid of Hogwarts, the Ministry, and the people. However, back then, she merely wanted to stand on her two feet. Get through the day, much like he does now, not to the other side of the world.  
  
  
  
  
  
IV.  
  
Keeping his thoughts to himself, she is once again in the forefront, her image swirling in his mind as he works, kicks the grass next to Sirius’ headstone and attends Friday dinners at the Burrow. It takes a few Floo calls, many letters on her end and a few of Hermione’s hexes for him to finally Owl her in response.  
  
He finds the situation bizarre for she’s busy when he first arranges a time for them to meet. It’s as though Pansy Parkinson has got a small group of friends. People from work.  
  
“How about Saturday?” he writes to which she answers, “Yes.”  
  
She puts a smiley face in the corner.  
  
When he sees her at the café, it hits him that this isn’t the same Pansy as before. This one is no longer distant, spoiled and bitter, or maybe only in smaller portions.  
  
Back then, she depended on him and Malfoy after that final straw with her parents, but now she has “one of those job things” in Diagon Alley, people to spend time with. Her own life. All seemingly constructed without him.  
  
What if he could have been there? Perhaps, that would have stunted her growth… He knows better. If anything, he’s grateful that she has the sort of serenity few actually find after the War.  
  
All of this nasty growing-up business… he can’t help but admire. And maybe if he spends more time with her, it might rub off on him.  
  
  
  
  
  
III.  
  
After their second _first_ date, she agrees to him sleeping at hers.  
  
Though, he must take the sofa. Her room offers too great a temptation. A good thing too, because she snores, hogs the duvet, and is much too proud to admit that she’s less than graceful while asleep. And that she wants him this early in their re-relationship.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
II.  
  
Behind the kind, gentle exterior, she notices that he remains in limbo.  
  
In ten years, he’s avoided, instead of healed.  
  
That was why throwing away his affections destroyed _her_ , because she knew that she had caused him enough hurt to last a lifetime and a half.  
  
Yet, he, with his bloody compassion and heart, still lets her back in.  
  
This time around, small things, like watching him put away dishes carefully, demonstrate a lot, e.g. having nothing as a child means that he takes good care of things. It is what she relearns about him which mends her heart. As time goes by, she might even begin to enjoy sharing things like oxygen and breakfast.  
  
And let’s be honest; though it takes a while for him to be comfortable again, for the corner of his lips to turn upwards as she wakes up beside him, seeing his boxer-clad arse in her kitchen isn’t the worst thing ever.  
  
  
  
  
I.  
  
Gradually, between them an unspoken agreement is formed: she’s staying in his life for the hours, days and months to come.  
  
Neither of them have to ask. They just know.  
  
  
  
  
  
FIN.


End file.
